VMETRO announces support for the Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ: XLNX) Virtex™-5 family of FPGAs with the unveiling of two board level products designed around this revolutionary new device family. The products, based on open standard form-factors including PMC and PCI, are targeted for deployed embedded applications as well as development platforms.
The early adoption of the Virtex-5 FPGA family enables customers to deploy new high gate density, high performance solutions with lower power. Thus, VMETRO can provide more computing and throughput in a given space. Next generation applications typically requiring these capabilities include Software Defined Radio (SDR), Signal Intelligence (SigInt) and real-time imaging.
VMETRO’s initial products are based on the Xilinx LX50 and LX110 FPGAs.
For PCI based development platforms, the DEV-FPGA05, based on the Xilinx LX50 Virtex-5 FPGA, will be bundled with a software support package to allow Virtex-5 applications to be evaluated and developed at low cost.
For embedded applications typically found in medical imaging or aerospace and defense systems, the PMC-FPGA05D PMC module with a Virtex-5 LX110 will be available.
I/O modules already developed include parallel LVDS, CameraLink and RS422. Additional custom modules can be designed by development engineers or VMETRO.
Architecturally, both the PMC and PCI based products share a common structure to maximize the performance of the FPGAs. This includes up to three 4Mbyte banks of QDR II SRAM and two 64Mbyte banks of DDR2 SDRAM connected directly to the Virtex-5 FPGA. The memory architecture means that large datasets, such as entire video images, FFTs and DSP vector arrays can be stored locally for fast processing and data buffering. SDRAM provides valuable high-volume storage. 256Mbit FLASH is also provided for turn-key FPGA configuration to simplify application deployment. Fast data I/O is provided by directly coupling I/O modules and parallel interfaces, including PCI-X, to help stream data straight to the FPGA without bottlenecks being introduced.
Xilinx Virtex-5 family of FPGAs significantly increases VMETRO’s processing capabilities over previous generations of board level products. Performance improvements include:
faster access to multiple banks of both QDR SRAM and DDR SDRAM, tied directly to the Virtex-5 device
